At its Wednesday meeting, the PennSERS board approved up to $75 million apiece to Vista Equity Partners Fund VII, a private equity fund that focuses on North American technology companies; and NGP Natural Resources XII, a natural resources fund managed by NGP Energy Capital Management that focuses on North American businesses involved in oil and natural gas production, midstream energy and oilfield services. It also approved a commitment of up to $25 million to NGP Keystone, another natural resources fund that focuses on North American oil and gas investments.

The commitments are subject to successful contract negotiations.

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The board also approved 10 target-date funds for the state's soon-to-be launched DC plan. The suite includes nine funds separated in five-year increments starting with 2020 and ending at 2060. A post-retirement fund is also available to participants.

Participants who do not elect an investment option when they join PennSERS will be defaulted into an age-appropriate target-date fund.

Empower Retirement is the third-party administrator for the state's deferred compensation and DC plans. The system previously announced it hired
BlackRock (BLK) to manage the target-date funds.

The PennSERS board also reported a net return of 8.6% for the 12 months ended June 30. Returns by asset class for the year ended June 30 were private equity 13%; global equities 11.2%; real estate 5.2%; cash 1.6%; fixed income 0.1%; and hedge funds -2.3%.

PennSERS' three-, five- and 10-year annualized returns as of June 30 were 6.6%, 7.6% and 4.5%, respectively.

For the year ended June 30, 2017, the pension fund returned a net 7.2%.